Penny Liberty, The First African American Encyclopedia of African American & Cultural History

From its long history of slavery, suppression of women’s suffrage, and black and poor voter-disenfranchisement, to the George Rekers rentboy scandal, to last week’s racist epithets thrown by a state senator, to the racial slaying and dragging of a black man by his white co-worker, South Carolina has become the epicenter of everything that’s wrong with America.

Now, before you go all Confederate on me, and tell me it’s unfair to blame an entire state for the actions of just a few, I’ll agree, but I’ll also blame the people of South Carolina (who number slightly more than half the population of New York City,) for allowing the same ugly events to happen again and again. At some point, citizens have to stand up and say, “Enough!”

Perhaps South Carolina will change its tourism slogan from “Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places,” to “Yeah, Mark Sanford isn’t the only bad…